Adobe Reader 9 Available – Works Fine with SharePoint

Adobe Reader Version 9 is now available for download, you can get it here. I was hoping that this version would include a 64-bit iFilter for use with SharePoint but unfortunately it doesn’t. Many WSS or MOSS users want to index PDF documents and they also want to follow Microsoft’s recommendations and install 64-bit software.

I’ve been told that there could be a 9.x version of the reader available by the end of the year, or thereabouts, but in the meantime if you want to crawl and index PDFs in the 64-bit version of SharePoint your two options are either the commercial iFilter from Foxit Software, or the fix from Adobe which lets an administrator configure the 32-bit filter to work on 64-bit systems, available here. I know the Foxit product means purchasing licenses per CPU core, but this still seems to me like a more stable option for production servers.

I decided to try Reader 9 on a 32-bit MOSS installation, to see if I could still configure it for use, as described at Filter Central, and by ServerGrrl. The configuration worked fine, and I could successfully crawl PDF documents immediately after. Also worth noting that the Adobe iFilter CLSID of {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603} is still the same in Reader 9.

By the way, if you are installing Adobe Reader 9 on your desktop, from my own experience you will see a definite improvement in load speed.

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This entry was posted on July 18, 2008 at 4:44 pm and is filed under Microsoft SharePoint, Search.
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10 Responses to “Adobe Reader 9 Available – Works Fine with SharePoint”

leonardrsaid

If you are talking about the configuration that allows you to run a 32-bit filter on 64-bit systems, available here http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/PDF_iFilter_8_-_64-bit_Support then I have mentioned that in my post, but as I understand it this is using a “thunking” layer to make the 32-bit filter to work, NOT a true 64-bit iFilter. I was advised by Adobe product management that a true 64-bit iFilter would not be available until a 9.x release of the reader.

But if you know otherwise, please let me know where I can get a true 64-bit iFilter from Adobe…

Also, don’t forget that if the PDF documents existed on the site BEFORE you installed the iFilter, you must perform a full crawl before their content gets indexed. This is done with STSADM using the command Stsadm -o spsearch -action fullcrawlstart.

Glad to hear you got it working. There is a separate MS Technote which refers to this dll here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928619 but this relates to environment variables rather than an unregistered dll.

[…] with the greatest number of hits are the one on configuring a PDF iFilter with WSS 3.0, and using Adobe Reader 9 with SharePoint. Almost every SharePoint implementation I’ve been involved in has required setting up a […]